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Connect Your First Model

Before an assistant can answer, Wayland needs a model to think with. You only need one connection to start, and the fastest path is Flux Router.

Section titled “Recommended: Flux Router (one key, every model)”

Flux Router is the recommended way to connect. Instead of signing up with a dozen providers and managing a separate API key for each, you connect once and get smart routing across many models behind a single key. Wayland sends each turn through Flux, which picks a model for the task and handles the provider accounts for you.

  1. Open Settings -> Models (the first-run onboarding offers this too).
  2. On the Flux Router card at the top, choose Connect Flux Router.
  3. Your system browser opens the Flux sign-in page. Sign in, or create an account.
  4. Wayland mints a per-device key automatically and saves it to your operating system keychain. There is no key to copy or paste.

Flux Router then sits at the top of Settings -> Models. Rather than pinning one specific model, you can pick a quality level and let Flux route each task to a suitable model.

Already have a Flux key? On the same card, choose to paste a key and enter your sk-flux-... key instead of running the sign-in.

Bring your own provider

Section titled “Bring your own provider”

Prefer to connect a provider directly? You can. Anthropic is the default, but any of the supported providers works.

  1. Open Settings -> Models.
  2. Find your provider in the grid (for example, Anthropic) and choose Manage.
  3. Authenticate one of two ways:
    • Sign in with your account (Anthropic supports OAuth, so you can use a Claude subscription with no API key).
    • Paste an API key in the credential form.
  4. Save. The provider now shows as connected.

Pick a model

Section titled “Pick a model”

Once a provider is connected, choose a default model:

  • In Settings -> Models, set a default model for the provider, or
  • Use the model selector in the dashboard launch bar to pick a model per conversation.

You can switch models at any time, including mid-project. Different assistants can run different models.

Verify it works

Section titled “Verify it works”

Send a quick test message from the dashboard, for example:

Say hello and tell me which model you are.

If you get a reply, the connection is good. If not, see Provider and Auth Errors.

Add more later

Section titled “Add more later”

You are not limited to one connection. Wayland’s desktop catalog includes 32 providers, from the major hosted models to local OpenAI-compatible servers, and Flux Router can sit alongside them. Add as many as you like in Settings -> Models. To point Wayland at a local model such as Ollama, add an OpenAI-compatible provider with a base URL of http://localhost:11434.

Next

Section titled “Next”